Letters to the Editor: Does rioting indicate a 'cause'?

Objects are thrown towards PSNI officers an the water canon on Springfield Road in Belfast during unrest.

There’s been a tendency in debate and in reports to call the ongoing events in loyalist communities ‘nights of violence’ or ‘scenes of disorder’.

While true, it’s curious that the word ‘riot’ is not being as used freely as it could.

This initially seems unfair, when compared to other events of last year. However, this could be a good way to label the situation. There’s the old adage that rioting is the voice of the unheard or the oppressed.

These loyalists fighting their own police service in Belfast are not oppressed, since they have always had full rights in a British Northern Ireland. They are not unheard, because Arlene Foster sat down with a group representing former loyalist terrorists.

As a British military report on the Troubles said, loyalist paramilitaries are little more than a ‘collection of gangsters’. They have no ideology
besides hatred of Irish people, republicans and Catholics.

Perhaps by rioting now, they are fulfilling a fantasty that they have a cause.

Jack Desmond

Timoleague

Bandon

Co Cork

A polity continually dysfunctional

The partition of Ireland prevented the exercise of self-determination by the Irish people. Those in the six counties who had fought for, voted for and given allegiance to the Republic were forced into a polity that denied their rights and sought to submerge their identity.

A border poll under the terms of the Good Friday Agreement will by contrast be the exercise of self determination by the Irish people north and south with in-built safeguards for British identity following reunification. People will vote for or against reunification based on the prospectus before them and some will of course be disappointed with the outcome. This is true of every electoral exercise. There is however no coercion involved and there will be no ‘captured minority’ facing discrimination, gerrymandering, or a denial of rights.

Those attempting to create an equivalence between the imposition and
the removal of partition may wish to impede constitutional change.

This ploy is neither credible nor convincing and need not long detain those working to initiate such change.

Recent events in the North do, however, compel us to consider where the remedy must lie when a polity, the political institutions it contains and the political discourse it promotes are continually dysfunctional.

Paul Laughlin

An Chúil Mhór

Doire

Govt must get a handle on ‘farce’

The vaccine rollout by this Government has been a shambles, forcing GPs to cancel hundreds of appointments.

With our elderly most at risk, the situation has descended into a farce. Vaccines are the key to get us out of lockdown and we are in a shortfall of 80%.

The test and trace programme is still not working one year down the line.

Sinn Fein president Mary Lou McDonald.

Mary Lou McDonald has rightly asked how people cant go 5km from home, yet up to 10,000 people a week are arriving here from abroad.

Public health officials have been urging this Government to implement mandatory quarantine for international arrivals for months. With the worrying new Covid variants, delays in dealing with the issue of international travel has left us all exposed to this deadly virus.

This Government needs to get a handle on all of this and listen to others who are more qualified.

Noel Harrington

Kinsale

Co Cork

US: Guns must be registered/regulated

President Joe Biden is making a first step to addressing gun control by requiring checks on ‘ghost guns, those that are regulated and are untraceable. The idea that these can be homemade or bought online by anyone is concerning. Of course, registering guns does not make them less deadly but it helps to know who could have fired them.

President Joe Biden gestures as he speaks about gun violence prevention in the Rose Garden at the White House, 

Why the NRA has so much power in America is puzzling for an outsider, like any Australian who has limited access to or contact with guns and little need for them. Guns in Australia are generally only used by the best and worst, the police and criminals, although farmers and sportspeople have controlled access to them.

Biden offers hope and yet he must know how hard it will be to make any significant change. Good luck sir.

Dennis Fitzgerald

Vic Melbourne

Australia

Our president Putin is no tsar

For two reasons, our president is not a tsar ( Irish Examiner view: Tsar Putin, Apr, 7, 2021). The first one is easy to explain as his father simply was not one while the second one needs a whole letter.

Seeing Vladimir Putin in my birthplace of Tuva in Siberia always baffles me as every high-standing Kremlin official visiting it always afterwards willy-nilly leaves his job: marshal Moskalenko made a simple inspector general of Ministry of Defence in 1962; deputy chairman Lesechko pensioned off in 1980; the first Soviet prime minister Ryzhkov replaced after a heart attack in 1990; his deputy Silaev made redundant after the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991; president Yeltsin resigned in 1999; prime minister Medvedev sacked in January 2020; even the only foreign dignitary, the Mongolian leader Tsedendal, forced into
retirement in 1984.

So Putin’s frequently visiting the region means that he not being a tsar sees nothing wrong in likewise resigning one day instead of dying in office.

Mergen Mongush

Moscow

Russia

Gabriel Byrne’s ‘masterpiece’

I have just finished reading Gabriel Byrne’s memoir Walking With Ghosts. We tend not to praise our own enough in this country. This is an absolutely beautiful poetic read. His descriptions of his Dublin childhood are just mesmerising.

A few of the childhood ghosts he describes, I can well relate to from my own childhood living in Dublin. Both good and bad.

To escape the bad, just like Gabriel, I enjoyed taking a trip to the pictures (as movies were called in the 1960s).

It was at the pictures that I dreamed of becoming a movie star. Unlike Gabriel, I’m still dreaming.

The author Colum McCann writes on the flap of the book: “Make no mistake about it: this is a masterpiece.”

He does not exaggerate.

Brian Mc Devitt

Glenties

Co Donegal

The absurdity of the illogical

Just about anybody can obtain a third-level degree as a mature student without a Leaving cert or Junior cert. Why then would you ask a nurse, a pharmacist, a dentist, a vet or a doctor for their Leaving or Junior Certs in order to train to give a simple vaccine?

Why would you permit large retail outlets to sell flowers, baby clothes, children’s shoes or teenager’s speciaist garb while banning small retailers from plying their stock and trade doing the same, at least by click and collect outdoors?

Why would you ban outdoor sports and recreation without the 19th hole while permitting indoor socialising among family groups travelling from countries with large populations and Covid varients?

Why would you not offer vaccination to higher transmission risk groups compelled to work in crowded indoors such as gardaí, carers, SNAs and teachers before doing the same for young people following the health guidelines strictly and isolating at home? The absurdity of the illogical in this Covid fine weather is bound only by the excuse of “systems failure”, or the ability of ministers to keep on “looking at it”, to “learn lessons” while “commissioning a report” while waiting for a plan to make a plan.

Kevin T Finn

Mitchelstown

Co Cork